I am pleased to announce that Massdrop X NuForce EDC has won The Absolute Sound´s Product of the Year 2017 award in earphone/IEM category!

"The Massdrop x NuForce EDC ranks as the most carefully designed and ruggedly built budget in-ear reviewer Steven Stone has seen. Its light weight, compact casing, interchangeable cables, and slightly dark but full range sonics combine to make it his best-buy in-ear monitor - and TAS´ Earphone of the Year. " - Steven Stone, The Absolute Sound (Ultimate Guide to Headphones and Personal Audio)

The Absolute Sound is one of the most respected and oldest Audiophile publications in the USA.

Here's a new in-ear monitor (IEM) from us that I'm really excited about. Something the audiophile community has requested for a long time: an inexpensive, removable cable IEM. While that might not sound exciting at first, it's the combination of features plus execution with attention to detail that is hard to find at a low price point. Most companies don’t set out with the clear intention of making the very best entry-level product. They start out with a high-end product and then whittle down features until they feel comfortable selling it for less. The result isn’t a holistically considered product but just a “low-end thing”.

There are a few community-favorite, great-sounding IEMs out there for under $100. The problem has been that if the cable breaks on your $40 "giant-killer" and you need to buy a new one...now it's an $80 IEM with the same risks. But, changing an existing favorite to have removable cables takes: new tooling/molds, reliable connectors, and can also change the sound (many IEMs have small housings and need to be made larger to accept removable connectors). After trying to improve some of the favorite low-cost IEMs, we opened up the search for a partner who understood what we were trying to do and could create a new product for us from the ground up.

There are a couple more requirements the community gave us for this project from all of your requests and feedback online:

-A lot of people like the option of a microphone cable, but some audiophiles swear the electronic circuit in the cable changes the sound. Needs to have a microphone cable AND a braided cable.

-Even some community-favorite, low priced IEMs can vary a lot between units. If you have to buy more than one unit to get the sound you want, the price increases. So the units have to be consistent to provide value. A requirement for the NuForce EDC is to be within +/-2 dB of left/right channel matching and from the frequency response target. This is being carefully worked on to scale with production.

NuForce is already known for having very comfortable IEMs. We were really happy that they were willing to work with Massdrop and the audiophile community to provide the above and tune an all-around fun, musical sound signature with clarity and bass that works for travel, gym, or quiet listening environments.

So just had one of the monitors casing split open. They just seem to be push fit with no adhesive and unfortunately putting them back together doesn't work as they no longer have a firm fit.

Pretty disappointed as I've babied these since I got them and I really didn't expect such a basic flaw. It doesn't really do much good having a removable cable if the guts of the housing get pulled out before the cable disconnects.

The front and back part of the housing are attached in two ways - clips and glue. This solution can handle a pulling force of 10kg - which is twice what an IEM traditionally is designed to handle. Normal adhesive couldn't go as far as 10kg.

Having said that, of course even the most robust product fails sometimes. I am aware that there are few similar cases - but the failing rate is less than 0.2% if considering everything that Massdrop has sold. If combined all similarly designed IEMs that we've sold, the rate would be less than 0.01%.

Even the 0.01% is higher than we would want and of course something like this is covered by a warranty. Please contact Massdrop or us directly and we will replace the earphones.

Hey, as an engineer myself(and having done time in failure engineering) relative stats are often pretty meaningless, particularly if the test itself isn't indicative of real world conditions. For example in your design you've colocated the maximum point of stress with the seem of the casing. I know totally why you did this as it makes it much much easier to manufacture. But similarly you are also going to have potentially pretty high loads being transmitted into the housing, especially as the cabled while detachable are pretty stiff, and giving an obvious point of failure. Although pulling force isn't going to be the primary failure mechanism by my take on it, shear would be more diagnostic, but I've only cursarily inspected it.

If your stats are right it's probably not an issue as long as your QC is good enough and cover the small number of defects under warranty. I've contacted support and they've arranged a warranty replacement which is fine with me. But it's worth shouting out any issues in an open forum like this to keep everyone honest!

Starting last Thursday, 10th of May, I noticed the right channel was a little quieter than usual. It got progressively quieter the next couple days of use, so I just bumped the balance to bias right to "even out" the sound. I checked for any blockage and didn't see any. This last Wednesday, with the balance shifted to full right, the left was still audible, and only random higher frequencies made it through on the right side. I tried swapping the cables, reversing the L & R monitors, and plugging it into my phone and laptop to verify that it was in fact the right unit dieing, and not a cable or source issue.

I've been using my second set fresh out of the packaging for two days now, no issues with them. I have the bad set back in their original box.

If you don't mind I would like to swap the earphones and inspect the old pair. You can submit a RMA request here https://www.optoma.com/us/support/rma-procedure/ , and our customer service department will get in touch with you. You can include a mention that I wrote to you on Massdrop.com and that I guided you to return the pair for inspection.